Happy Birthday, Alice Walker!

Alice Walker: novelist, poet, short-story writer, essayist, teacher, editor, publisher, womanist, activist. Also a Pulitzer-Prize winner, a Guggenheim fellow, a Merrill fellow, a Radcliffe Institute fellow, a National Book Award winner and on and on. Her books have been banned and restored, critiqued and revered. She has contributed to Ms. in more than thirty issues, is a former contributing editor to the magazine and, oh yeah, today, she turns 67.

Get in the birthday spirit by rereading one of her 1974 stories from Ms. Check out this recent Ms. Blog post acknowledging her role in bringing Zora Neale Hurston’s talent to light. Spend some hours with one of her many powerful books. Bask in the glory that is Alice Walker’s writing.

Or watch Gloria Steinem, Ms. cofounder and good friend of the birthday woman, honor her at the public opening of Walker’s archives at Emory University in April 2009.